Looking for Angels (Book 1) - The Hybrid
by Keep calm. We have hulk
Summary: Darkness spoken, darkness known, darkness coiled so deeply their hearts they couldn't even feel it. They never even knew until the monster girl with a shadowed heart fell right into their hands. And by then it was far too late. First in the Looking for Angels trilogy. Zuko/OC


**Chapter 1: Strangerhood**

Storms. The most dangerous foe Zuko failed to vanquish throughout his three years of banishment, certainly the most hindering of obstacles.

Rain poured from the sky in buckets. Waves splashed up onto the deck in torrents. Winds slashed through the dark sky like knives. Every person on the deck of the ship was felt frozen, right down to his bones. But they did not cease working, not even for an instant. They knew if they stopped, their ship ran the risk of sinking. Nobody wanted to die.

Zuko yelled orders to his soldiers over the howling winds. Nothing had been going right for him recently. He had been all over the world looking for the Avatar, but all his leads had been dead end streets – not that he had any hints anymore. The storm was a major setback to his underdeveloped plans. His skin heated and water evaporated off of him as his anger swelled.

Thunder boomed overhead. A flash of lightning illuminated the sky for less than a second. The waves sent the ship bucking and lurching. The crew stumbled, trying to keep balance. Zuko slid across the rain-soaked deck to the wall of the bridge, placing a hand on it to steady himself. Doubled over momentarily under a cold blast of rain and wind. That was when fate decided to throw a wild card into the story.

A particularly large wave rolled under the ship, causing it to veer up sharply. The force threw the Fire Nation prince to the deck, arms and back taking the worst of the damage. If he had hit his head, he would have missed the sound that followed; the sound of something slamming violently into the starboard side of his ship. But he did hear it. With his ear pressed to the ship's metal surface, he heard the noise. He rose to his feet.

Righting himself and gaining some balance, he turned to face the side of the ship an unidentified object had unmistakably banged into. He called to the three nearest crewmembers nearest to him. He approached the railing with his soldiers in tow. He reached out and gripped the ship's railing as firmly as he could with the slippery deck and the slick surface of the rail itself, leaning out over the side of the ship to see what had made such a sound that head could hear it on the deck, all the way on the port side of the ship.

What he saw was not what he expected to see.

There, bobbing up and down in the waves was a large piece of driftwood with two drenched figures clinging to it like leeches. His soldiers wasted no time in pulling the two castaways out of the roiling ocean waters, without Zuko's order, much to his chagrin. In the following confusion, nobody could really see them very well. Zuko only caught one detail.

Fire.

He didn't understand how there was fire anywhere on the ship under such wet conditions. Even his soldiers couldn't properly use their bending. Yet, he saw the unmistakable flash of flickering color before she was borne away from him. "Take her below deck to my uncle!" Zuko yelled after them, but the crew only half-heard him.

Zuko watched as they carried away the two fiery strangers. When they vanished from view, he turned and went back to making sure his ship didn't sink. He didn't have time for two strange castaways. He had an Avatar to catch.

"Again."

Fire blasted through the air towards him. He bent backwards, waving a hand in front of his face to deflect the flames. He brought his left leg up and swung it in an arch, flames erupting forth and sending his soldiers backwards. He sued the momentum to carry him through a spin and several leaps, his hands and feet spitting fire. He leapt straight up into the air, avoiding a low burst. He thrust his clenched fists forward, a blaze of orange, red, and gold spewing out. Landing nimbly on his feet, he looked around to survey his work. All of his soldiers were picking themselves up from the ground, groaning and muttering.

"Very good, Prince Zuko."

The fire prince turned to look at his uncle sitting in a chair across the deck from him. "Am I ready for the next set?" Zuko asked, ignoring his uncle's praise.

"Yes, but I think you should take a break. You've been overworking yourself with the lack of things to do. The storm was only yesterday, Zuko. You should let your body recover," Iroh replied, concern in his wise voice.

"I don't need to rest! I need to capture the Avatar!" Zuko once again ignored his uncle's emotions. He opened his mouth to say more, but he stopped. Something caught his eye.

Fire. He saw fire, just like he had when his crew first pulled the mysterious castaways out of the ocean during the storm. Or, that's what he thought he saw at first; it was not, in fact, fire.

There was a girl standing in the doorway to the lower decks. Her hair was a vibrant shade of ginger, making it appear that she had a lick of flame on her head. She was tall for a girl, standing a good five foot eight, at least. She was long-legged and slender. Her eyes were curious; not only were they mismatched, but also they were not normal colors. Her right eye was a deep purple, while her left was a blood-red hue. She was extremely pale-skinned, even more so than any Fire Nation citizen, but she was not quite albino. Her fingernails were long, sharp, and claw-like in shape. Her feet were also armed with claws, attached to her slightly blunted toes on strange, elongated feet, like the hind paws of a dog or cat. From a distance you couldn't see them, but her skin was laced with silvery scars, varying in shape, size, and cause. But the strangest thing of all about the girl by far was something that everyone on deck noticed right away; she had a _tail_. A wolf's tail the same ginger shade as her hair spilled out from its root above the top of her dark gray pants. Ears the same color as her skin – Wolfen, once again, not normal human ears – rose on either side of her hairline, standing erect on her head like soldiers called to attention by a superior. When she opened her mouth in a gaping yawn, she displayed two sets of fangs – one immediately next to her two front teeth, looking like slightly longer, sharper canines, and another set directly behind those, lengthy, pointed, and curved, like the fangs of a wolf. She was the single most peculiar girl anyone on board the ship had ever seen in their lives.

Iroh didn't waste any time in standing up from his seat. "Ah, I see one of our young castaways is finally awake," he said to no-one in particular, before calling out to her, "My dear, you should be resting! You're looking very pale!"

Her eyes unusual eyes, which had been surveying the ship, snapped over to settle on him. Her face flashed recognition shortly, but the expression hardly lasted a moment before it flickered away, causing Zuko to blink and wonder if he'd just imagined it. "I am?" she asked. Her voice was bizarre as well, all silvery and flowing, but sort of rough and sharp at the same time, like she was talking with sticks in her mouth. "How pale?"

"As a sheet, my dear! It's not healthy," Iroh replied.

"Oh. That's okay then," she said, waving of his concern. "I usually look like this."

Iroh seemed shocked. "You're _naturally_ that pale?"

"Who are you?" Zuko cut off his uncle with one of his usual blunt, to the point questions.

Upon hearing his voice, she turned the full force of her gaze on him. He nearly stumbled back under the power of her red and purple eyes. He noticed how they were armed with pupils more akin to an animal's, slit-like and narrow. There were no whites in her eyes either. She was intimidating by anyone's standards, but Zuko didn't let her know that. She blinked slowly at him for a few brief, silent moments, before seeming to come to some sort of decision and answering.

"That depends."

Zuko furrowed his brow. "'That depends?'" he repeated. "Depends on what?"

The cheerless cousin of a smile curled the corners of her lips. "That's for me to know and you to find out, Prince," she stated, her eyes twinkling like she'd just been told a secret. Then she turned to Iroh, saying simply, "I'm going to go see if my brother's awake yet." She started to walk away.

The teenage prince called her back. "What's your name, castaway?"

She turned back, a smile like the silver flash of a fish in a stream crossed her face. "You'll find out, Prince." Then she turned on her heel and walked back down below decks, seeming to be balanced on pinpoints with her elongated feet.

Zuko was completely and utterly dumbfounded. How had she known he was a prince? Had she been standing there when his uncle had addressed him? No, he would've seen her if she had. How then? He didn't remember it ever being said during the short-lived conversation. How, then, had she known he was a prince? She didn't look like Fire Nation… But then, she didn't look like any nation. She didn't even look human. He wasn't sure what she was.

"What a strange girl," he heard Iroh murmur.

"Yeah – strange," Zuko agreed. He turned to the retired general. "What is she, Uncle? Where did she come from? How did she know about me?"

Iroh shook his head. "I do not know, my nephew."

Zuko turned away; fixing his golden gaze on the open doorway the strange girl had disappeared into. His thoughts buzzed. He had to know. He had to know whom this bizarre castaway girl knew him. He had to know how much she knew. _Maybe she's connected to the Avatar?_

Desperation brought him closer to the truth than he would have ever gotten if he had bided his time.

"'Hoshi? Where are we?"

"We're on a Fire Nation ship, 'Toku."

"Really?"

"Yep, and guess which one it is? We're sharing the ship with the great General Iroh and Prince Zuko."

"So… We're going to be part of this now?"

"I guess so."


End file.
